Nokia Lumia 800 Review - Nokia's Brave New Foray into WP7
by Brian Klug on January 4, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- windows phone 7
- Mobile
- WP7
- Lumia
- Lumia 800
Display
The Lumia 800 uses a WVGA (800x480) 3.7” Super AMOLED display which of course comes with RGBG PenTile. The reality is that Windows Phone actually feels like it’s designed around AMOLED to some extent, so this isn’t nearly as big of a concern as it would be otherwise. In fact, WP7 does take advantage of AMOLED’s light-emitting nature to display as much black as possible unless you change the background theme, but anyhow onto the display itself.
Because we can’t set the brightness manually in the settings UI, we have to rely on the Low/Medium/High presets that are defined already. There’s actually a way to set the brightness manually inside ##634# but it isn’t clear whether these settings persist after exiting. As usual, we’ve measured brightness and white point - AMOLED blacks are literally zero thanks to the light-emitting nature of that display technology.
I find that the Lumia 800 isn’t as dark as the numbers would have you believe, though it could benefit from going a bit brighter. No doubt Nokia has chosen to err on the conservative side to conserve some battery life.
| Lumia 800 Display Metrics | |||
| Brightness Level | Black Brightness (nits) | White Brightness (nits) | White Point (K) |
| High | 0 | 196.1 | 5854 |
| Medium | 0 | 44.8 | 6043 |
| Low | 0 | 11.6 | 6117 |
The curved nature of the Corning Gorilla Glass display is another thing to discuss as well. It looks great and isn’t curved so much that it gets in the way of dragging things around on the display or interacting. Of course, at the most extreme viewing angles (as you approach a critical angle) you do see some total internal reflection effects, but that ends up being literally viewed from the extreme side or bottom.
As usual I’ve also put together an outdoor viewing gallery in addition to some different viewing angles of the display for your perusal. Nokia’s ClearBlack display helps things here, as they’ve placed a circular polarizer between the touch layer and the front display glass to eliminate some reflections.
I feel as though WP7 is one of the first UIs that’s designed with some of the AMOLED/PenTile display guidelines taken to heart, though there’s still more that WP7 could do to leverage some of AMOLEDs unique strengths. Little functions like displaying the time or status even when the phone is locked are things that other Nokia phones with AMOLED have done for a while that really made sense and served an important purpose that aren’t done in WP7 quite yet.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
120 Comments
View All Comments
Iketh - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Look, you either write it the way I suggested above using series, or "There's a lot riding on Lumia devices, which are Nokia's first to run Windows Phone 7.5."Either way, doesn't matter.
BioTurboNick - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Except that "which" proxies for "Lumia series" not "first devices".Better construction would be "Lumia series of devices, which are..." or "Lumia series, which is Nokia's first line of devices."
BioTurboNick - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
I take that first one back. The subject would still be the series, not the devices.Brian Klug - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Apologies, these are all fixed now :)-Brian
Iketh - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Thx, feel free to delete this thread. I'm not making these posts in the future.465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I guess not since you demand $100 for advise like that.james.jwb - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Advice :)sprockkets - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Yeah, **** this site. After 12 years of reading excellent review I read no more site due to grammer (sic).Dude, **** yourself.
Starfireaw11 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I'd been wanting to ditch my iPhone 3GS and switch over to a Windows Phone ever since WP7 launched. The problem was that the hardware that was available just plain sucked. It was like the manufacturers weren't even trying. When Nokia announced that they were going to develop WP7 devices, I figured that I would hang on to the iPhone a little longer and wait and see what they could come up with as I'd always loved the build quality of Nokia phones, even my mid '90s brick. Fortunately in the meantime, Microsoft released WP7.5, which fixed a number of issues that were a down side to the WP7 devices, which was a real plus.When the Lumia 800 finally dropped in the UK, there were no announcements of it being released anywhere else, and I wanted one pretty badly. I ordered one online from a UK carrier and had it shipped to Australia. In the meantime, I contacted my provider and ordered a Micro SIM for it.
I've had the device for about a month now and I have to agree with everything that has been said in this article - I'm really happy with it and it's a huge improvement over the iOS, the build quality is fantastic and it's got a great "feel" to it when using the hardware. I give it an honest 8.5 / 10 and feel the need to point out that the fact that it doesn't get a 9 or 9.5 are all software related (as in the battery issues mentioned, as well as deficiencies in the WP7.5 OS and Zune software).
It's a really great product and if you're sick of iOS and Android devices or if you want to try something different, you should definately give it a go!
N4g4rok - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I've never been able to agree with the poor hardware specs argument mainly because mobile operating systems differ so much in requirements.A dual core processor on an Android device makes sense because it almost eliminates some of the slowdowns you get with bloated applications or the OS itself. Apple's A5 is tailored to fit their device specifically, so we know the requirements aren't even a negotiable issue.
I don't think WP7 requires as many resources as smartphone advertising has led us to believe. Personally, i've yet to see one get seriously hung up on a 1 Ghz SoC. Even though i can see why developers themselves would be interested in powerful hardware, i think powerhouse applications really fit into a small niche of smartphone use.